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 may have brought us the miner's strike, 99 Red Balloons, Torville and Dean and fluorescent legwarmers but it wasn't all bad; it also brought us Viking, the Penguin imprint that has launched the careers of many of the country's best-loved and bestselling writers.
Launched in 1984, Viking, like Penguin itself, has always been a very broad church, where very commercial authors sit comfortably alongside literary heavyweights. Viking's aim has always been to cater for readers with a wide range of tastes and interests. Among the first authors to join the list were Claire Tomalin and John Mortimer, who have remained bestselling stars on the list ever since.
Others to join early on were Dirk Bogarde and Ruth Rendell, writing under her nom de plume Barbara Vine. Two of the most notable novels of the 1980's were published in Viking: V.S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival and Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.
Non-fiction has always been an important part of the list and over the years history and science have become particularly strong. Notable history writers included Antony Beevor, Christopher Hibbert, Simon Schama, Roy Foster and Simon Winchester. A small but distinguished poetry list also exists with writing from Tony Harrison, Derek Mahon and Roger McGough.
Viking also publishes fiction of a consistently high quality: Pat Barker won the Booker Prize for The Ghost Road in 1995 and our list of novelists now includes Jonathan Coe, Will Self, Helen Dunmore, Zoe Heller, Nick Hornby, William Trevor, Penelope Lively, Patrick Neate, Tim Lott, Jim Crace, India Knight and Anita Brookner. |
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